


Can I Be Your Memory?

by LuthienLuinwe



Series: Batfam Bingo 2019 [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Batfam bingo 2019, Forgotten First Meeting, Hospitals, M/M, Traumatic Brain Injury, batfam bingo, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 11:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18343172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienLuinwe/pseuds/LuthienLuinwe
Summary: Something was wrong.Something was wrong, but it wouldn't be real until he picked up that phone."What, B?"He had meant it as a snap, but emotions had betrayed him and he couldn't hide the worry in his tone. Dick was three hours late. Dick wasn't answering his phone. Bruce was calling him..."Jason." Jason shut his eyes and held the phone close to his ear, not wanting to risk misunderstanding anything Bruce was about to tell him, much as he wished he could unhear the sheer exhaustion in Bruce's voice. "There's been an incident..."





	Can I Be Your Memory?

**This may never start, tearing out my heart. I'd be your memory. Lost your sense of fear, feelings disappear. Can I be your memory?**

Jason wanted two things and two things only on his nights off from patrol. Peace and quiet. He didn't think it was too much to ask for, but he could count on one hand the amount of times he'd actually managed to get both of those things at the same time. The quiet he could live without. Lack of quiet usually meant Dick was home and talking his ear off about everything that had happened at work that day. Jason could have listened to him talk and rant until the end of the world.

Peace had gone out the window at about one in the morning. Dick had promised to be home by midnight. And... Dick was never on time. Jason didn't like it, but he'd come to accept it. Dick was always late. He always would be. But he _always_ called. Midnight had come, and no sign of Dick was to be had, and Jason had grabbed his phone from the charger and moved out of bed and into the living room to sit on the couch.

Twelve-ten had passed, and the phone hadn't so much as buzzed, and Jason thought about sending a quick text to make sure everything was okay, but figured Dick had just gotten stuck in a tussle with some straggling thugs and couldn't come to the phone. Because he would have called.

He always called.

One AM had passed, and Jason was starting to feel sick to his stomach.

He'd called five times, sent ten texts, and left three voicemails, and still he hadn't heard anything. He had turned the TV on to whatever God-awful infomercials played during that time of morning and tried to drown out the noise in his head. Drown out the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that something was horribly wrong. That Dick was in trouble and he needed help.

Two AM had passed, and there was still no sign of Dick, and Jason was worried sick in a way he'd never been worried in his life. He texted Tim, Tim for Christ's sake, to see if he had heard anything, but Tim seemed to be holding the same radio silence as Dick.

He flicked through his contacts and paused at Bruce's name.

He wasn't that desperate... Was he?

Three AM passed, and Jason's phone went off, a ringtone that wasn't Dick's bouncing around the all but empty safehouse.He shut his eyes and took a shaky breath. Each of his contacts had a different ringtone. He needed to know who was calling before he glanced at the Caller ID. Needed to make a snap judgment to let it ring or pick it up.

Bruce never called.

Gotham could be burning to the ground, and Bruce _would not call._

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong, but it wouldn't be real until he picked up that phone.

"What, B?"

He had meant it as a snap, but emotions had betrayed him and he couldn't hide the worry in his tone. Dick was three hours late. Dick wasn't answering his phone. Bruce was calling him...

"Jason." Jason shut his eyes and held the phone close to his ear, not wanting to risk misunderstanding anything Bruce was about to tell him, much as he wished he could unhear the sheer exhaustion in Bruce's voice. "There's been an incident..."

* * *

Doctors took on a certain tone of voice when breaking bad news to friends and family. They were trained to do it, and it showed, and Jason wanted to scream at the stupid surgeon who was talking to Bruce and acting like Jason wasn't even there. "Incident... Gunshot wound to the head... Critical condition... ICU... lucky to make it through the night."

They were permitted back two at a time, and Bruce and Jason had gone back before Babs or Gordon could make a move.

The nurses and doctors told Jason and Bruce to prepare themselves, that seeing Dick like that would be hard, that they should take a breath and send a prayer before turning the corner to the ward filled with glass walls and constant beeping, and nurses and residents sprinting down the hall with crash carts and gurneys.

Dick's room was small.

That was the first thing to pop into Jason's mind.

Bruce had moved straight to the monitors, checking Dick's heart rate (low) and blood pressure (lower).

Jason had glanced at the whiteboard hanging on the wall, looking at the names of every last person responsible for keeping his partner alive. Trauma Surgeon. Neurosurgeon. Anesthesiologist. RN. CNA. Dietician...

It was almost a relief that all the charts had gone electronic. Otherwise, Jason knew he and Bruce would be driving themselves insane flipping through a paper copy.

He took a shaky breath before finally letting himself look at the man lying in the middle of the room.

Dick had always been... Different. Untouchable.

Jason and Damian died.

Tim was, well... Tim.

Dick had always been something above. An idol. Someone they all strove to be, to surpass. Bad things happened to other people. Not to him. Never to him. And yet there he was, with a god-damn tube running down his throat so he could breathe, bandages wrapped around his head, leads and monitors and wires and tubes running through every square inch of him... "Jason," he vaguely heard Bruce say, but he was already out the door and down the hall.

"I can't do this," he had said when Babs had followed him and demanded what was wrong.

"Jason?" she had responded and taken his hands in hers, squeezing them tightly. "You're going to have to."

* * *

It was amazing how much someone could learn in three weeks of constant bedside vigil in the ICU.

Three weeks had never seemed like a significant amount of time to Jason before. But in three weeks, the woman in room 718 had died of an infection that had spread through a nasty stab wound in the stomach. The man in 720 had fallen brain dead, but his family wouldn't pull the plug. And Richard Grayson in room 719? Still breathed to a mechanical beat. Still got his nutrients from a feeding tube, and his fluids through a needle in his wrist.

It was amazing how much someone could learn in three weeks of constant bedside vigil in the ICU.

Dick had a living will. Jason hadn't known that, and he wanted to hate Dick for hiding that from him. Dick had a living will that stated if he didn't show signs of recovery within thirty days, that all life sustaining measures were to be removed.

Three weeks had never seemed significant, but 21 days had passed, and they only had nine more.

And nine days?

That wasn't any time at all.

* * *

It was day twenty-five when Dick's hand twitched, so quickly and so slightly that Jason had questioned whether he'd seen it all. But Jason had pressed the call button and watched as the medical professionals looked Dick over and confirmed that yes, he was waking up. And Jason wanted to let himself hope that everything was going to be okay. That Dick would wake and spend a bit longer in the hospital, and that everything was going to be fine and they would live happily ever after like they were supposed to, like they had planned to.

It was day twenty-nine when Dick's eyes had opened, only for a split second. And had the neurosurgeon not been in the room with them, Jason would have said it was the light playing a trick on him. "Welcome back, Mr. Grayson," the surgeon had smiled, and Jason had been ushered out of the room so more complex exams could be conducted without his presence.

It was amazing how easily he'd made the ICU waiting room his home away from home. It was nicer than the others in the hospital. It had better chairs and less harsh lighting and the people there always seemed to be behaving themselves, at least as best as they could.

There was a chair in the corner that sat across from a window that looked down at the streets below, and Jason had more or less claimed it as his own. He could watch as people left the hospital from that chair. See mothers holding their newborns close to their bodies. Family members reunited. A handful of times he'd even seen coworkers embracing as their shift started or ended.

He sat in the chair, and he glanced out the window, and he waited and waited and waited.

It was several hours before someone came to talk to him.

Dick was awake, though in and out of sleep. They had removed the tube down his throat, and he was breathing on his own.

Several tests had confirmed severe brain damage that may or may not be reversible...

Jason wasn't a crying man.

He hadn't cried when he'd found his mother dead on their living room floor.

He had called 911 and stepped back  and waited, even though he knew she was gone, that there was nothing anyone could do, and that the doctors at the ER would still try and tell him they'd done everything they could.

He hadn't cried in the year he spent living on the streets.

Hell. He hadn't even cried when he was about to die.

But after getting the news that the man he'd come to love may never be himself again?

He had left his chair overlooking the window and gone to the closest safehouse he had and cried like his life depended on it.

* * *

"Hey," Jason had forced a smile the next time he had gone to visit Dick.

Dick was awake, for the first time in weeks, and Jason could have cried with relief then and there. Because if Dick was awake, it meant everything was going to be okay. It meant he could get better. That he would get better and they would go home, and all of this was going to be a massive nightmare they would all recover from with enough time.

But Jason had seen that look that Dick gave him hundreds of times before, and he felt his heart sink. Because the same look Dick gave when he didn't remember someone who knew him was crystal clear, and Jason wished to whatever god might have been out there that he hadn't seen it. "Hey, " he repeated, hoping his voice sounded more confident than he felt, but Dick's expression never changed, and Jason didn't know if he wanted to be angry or concerned or upset or any mixture of those emotions and then some.

He didn't even register the strong hand that pressed down on his shoulder until he heard Bruce's voice, soft in his ear. "It's going to be okay."

But Bruce was wrong.

Because the Dick Grayson he loved was gone, and nothing was ever going to be okay again.


End file.
